HOW ISIS GUIDES WORLD’S TERROR PLOTS BY “REMOTE CONTROL”

Hyderabad, India — When ISIS identified a promising young recruit willing to carry out an attack in one of India’s major tech hubs, the group made sure to arrange everything down to the bullets he needed to kill victims.For 17 months, terrorist operatives guided the recruit, a young engineer named Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani, through every step of what they planned to be ISIS’ first strike on Indian soil.They vetted each new member of the cell as Yazdani recruited helpers. They taught him how to pledge allegiance to the terrorist group and securely send the statement. Read more

INFORMATION SHARING ON COUNTER TERRORISM IN THE EU HAS REACHED AN ALL-TIME HIGH

Europe is facing its most serious terrorist threat for over 10 years. The attacks on Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 marked a shift towards a broader strategy of Jihadist terrorism, and the so-called IS in particular, to intimidate Western countries with successive terror attacks across Europe. The potential increase of returnees from conflict zones requires vigilance from all involved actors. The launch of the ECTC in January 2016 was the EU’s answer to this new threat. Its establishment, including the Internet Referral Unit (IRU) as a new capability to tackle unprecedented levels of online terrorism propaganda, was a major milestone for the EU security architecture. For the first time in the EU there was consensus, in the counter terrorism policy context, that a cornerstone for cooperation at EU level was needed to support national counter terrorism efforts. Read more

GREECE AND THE NETWORK OF GERMAN RETIREES SPYING FOR TURKEY

Copyright: https://intelnews.org Publication at RIEAS web site (www.rieas.gr) on 10 December 2016

A German retiree living in Greece, who admitted in court that he was part of a network of German and other Western European residents of Greece recruited as spies by Turkish intelligence, has been jailed for 14 years. The 65-year-old man, who has not been named, was arrested two years ago in the southeastern Aegean island of Kos. He was born in Cold-War-era East Germany and worked as a locksmith before serving for 15 years in the East German National People’s Army. From 2009 to 2012, he lived in Turkey before moving permanently to Greece. Read more

THE GREEK GATEWAY TO JIHAD

Ioannis Mantzikos(Security analyst based in Athens, Greece. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the Free State University in South Africa and a senior analyst at the Research Institute for European and American Studies. His recent book with Dr. Denise Baken is entitled The Transformation of Al-Qaeda in the Middle East and North Africa).

Copyright: https://www.usma.edu - Publication at RIEAS web site (www.rieas.gr) on 15 October 2016

Greece has become a crossroads for extremists trying to reach Syria and Iraq from Europe and for fighters returning home. The fact that several members of the Paris and Brussels attack cell transited through the Greek island of Leros illustrates the Islamic State’s ability to exploit refugee flows in order to move fighters into Europe. Although Greece’s migrant crisis has eased recently, a persistent economic crisis has left the Greek government with limited resources and capability for border security and counterterrorism efforts. At a time of growing radicalization and Islamist extremist activity within Greece’s own borders, this has led to concern that the Islamic State may take advantage by launching attacks against Western or Russian tourists or interests on Greek soil. Read more

THE CONCEPT OF LONE JIHAD

Copyright: Marcin Styszyński on Line. Publication date in RIEAS web site (www.rieas.gr) in 7 August 2016.

Recent terrorist attacks in the world, including the tragedy in Nice show that terrorist acts carried out by jihadists still pose a significant threat to international security and demonstrate some new forms of activities....Read more

JIHAD AWAKES EUROPE

Hello. I'm Daniel Pipes and I'd like to speculate about the future of Europe. I can see three most likely possibilities.One is, when it comes to Islam, that everybody gets along, all is well, the future generations are better than the present generations, and there's no real problem. I don't think that's likely, although that is the working hypothesis of governments and, more broadly, the establishments: things will work out, we'll muddle through, it'll be okay. Read more